"They took people and made them lay on the barbed wire... and walked over them," Mackey said of the Chinese soldiers. "These are their own people and they walked over them. They were trying to get into the airport and blow up the planes."

He remembers when his unit was ordered to destroy its trucks and get on a ship bound for Pusan in South Korea, after the legendary Battle of the Chosin Reservoir.

"We decided we wanted to save the ballistics equipment," rather than destroy the trucks, Mackey said. "We drove south, went through roadblocks with our trucks. They gave me a Red Ribbon (award) for that."

But some of the 87-year-old's memories are lost.

"I saw too much death and destruction," said Mackey, who served in the Korean War with the 250th Ordnance Ballistics and Technical Service Detachment. "It was a hellhole."

And after he returned home in 1953, "I wouldn't talk about Korea for five years. Those five years took a lot out of my memory."

But, ahead of Memorial Day, he agreed to speak with the Poughkeepsie Journal about his service.

Born in Westchester County, Mackey comes from a military family, whose history of service dates back to the Civil War. His father served in World War I. An uncle was a Purple Heart recipient. Another uncle died on Normandy Beach. His older brother was in the U.S. Navy.

Mackey enlisted in the Army after high school. He signed up for the 250th after a brief stint teaching tank wiring in Maryland.

In Korea, Mackey spent three years providing weapons support and calibrating artillery for the Army and Marines.

He was among the 1.8 million Americans who served in combat during the Korean War, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The conflict lasted from August 1950 until a cease-fire, or armistice, was signed in July 1953.

Nearly 37,000 U.S. troops and millions of others were killed as South Korea, backed by a coalition of United Nations troops, fought off attempts from communist North Korea, China and the Soviet Union to dominate the Korean Peninsula.

For his actions during four battles, Mackey received the Korean Service Medal with four miniature bronze stars, along with the National Defense Service Medal and the United Nations Service Medal.

In Korea, Mackey focused on the tasks at hand, earning a promotion to sergeant 1st class at age 21.

When the war ended, he came home "unscathed," he said. But as he got a job at New York Telephone (now Verizon), married and became a father, there were memories he wouldn't talk about.

A family picnic in the late 1950s helped Mackey open up. There, his relatives candidly discussed their military service. Soon after, Mackey was able to speak about his own time overseas, first with a colleague, then with others.

In 1970, Mackey and his family moved from Mount Kisco to Beekman. The father of three raised horses and enjoyed decades at the telephone company. Last year, Mackey was inducted to the Veterans' Hall of Fame for the New York State Senate 40th District, and he was awarded an Ambassador of Peace Medal in February.